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THE USE OF FOLEY IN LIVE THEATRE AS DEMONSTRATED THROUGH THEATRE UCF’S PRODUCTION OF SHIPWRECKED! AN ENTERTAINMENT- THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF LOUIS DE ROUGEMONT (AS TOLD BY HIMSELF) by: ANTHONY NARCISO A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the Honors in the Major Program in Theatre Design and Technology In the College of Arts and Humanities And in The Burnett Honors College At the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Spring Term 2014 Thesis Chair: Mr. Charles Perry ABSTRACT Foley, a term named after Universal Studios sound pioneer Jack Foley, is an all- encompassing word for the creation of sound effects with materials that can emulate the sound of real world occurrences. While it is used heavily in the film and television world, Foley does not see much direct use in live theatrical performances. The widespread availability and use of prerecorded sound effects has altered the field of theatrical sound design. With thousands of audio files at a designer’s disposal, the need to create custom sounds is reduced. However, certain scripts do call for the use of live Foley. While most of these plays are staged radio dramas, Donald Margulies’s Shipwrecked! An Entertainment… is a brilliant theatrical work that focuses on the art of storytelling. His request for a Foley Artist is a request to stay true to the essence of the play. This thesis will detail the production process for a theatrical Foley designer by outlining the research, design, and execution phases and detailing the experimental nature of adding Foley to a live theatre performance. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1: SCRIPT ANALYSIS ....................................................................................................................... 2 Action Analysis .................................................................................................................................................. 2 CHAPTER 2: HISTORIC USE OF SOUNDS IN THEATRE .......................................................................... 5 Sound in Ancient Greek Theatre................................................................................................................. 6 Sound in the Renaissance .............................................................................................................................. 7 Sound in the 1800’s- Early 1900’s ............................................................................................................. 8 Foley Use in Live Theatre Today ................................................................................................................ 9 Foley Sounds vs. Recorded Sound Effects............................................................................................ 10 CHAPTER 3: DESIGN AND BUILD PHASES ............................................................................................... 13 Design Meetings ............................................................................................................................................. 13 The Shipwrecked… Design Process ......................................................................................................... 15 Research and Experimentation ............................................................................................................... 18 Integration into the World of the Play .................................................................................................. 21 Budgeting ......................................................................................................................................................... 23 CHAPTER 4: REHEARSALS ............................................................................................................................. 25 Foley in Rehearsal ......................................................................................................................................... 26 Item Storage .................................................................................................................................................... 28 Voices, Foley, and Music ............................................................................................................................. 28 Spacing/Pre-Technical Rehearsals ......................................................................................................... 29 CHAPTER 5: TECHNICAL REHEARSALS AND PERFORMANCES ..................................................... 31 Shipwrecked…Technical Rehearsals ....................................................................................................... 32 Sound Levels Within the Theatre Space ............................................................................................... 33 Shaping .............................................................................................................................................................. 34 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................. 37 APPENDIX A: PREPRODUCTION WORK.................................................................................................... 39 APPENDIX B: SELECT RESEARCH IMAGES .............................................................................................. 44 APPENDIX C: WIND MACHINE DOCUMENTS ......................................................................................... 50 APPENDIX D: ADDITIONAL PHOTOS AND PRODUCTION SHOTS .................................................. 55 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................................................... 60 iii INTRODUCTION To successfully design and construct the items for Foley techniques for a theatrical production, one must understand the historical use of the objects and instruments used to create sounds and how these uses influenced modern techniques. Foley is used largely in the film and television industries, but scarcely seen in modern theatre performances. When integrating live Foley into theatre, it is critical to remember that the sounds created can vary each performance and can never be edited as they are for film. Also, the items creating the sounds must believably be found in the time period that the story is set in. 1 CHAPTER 1: SCRIPT ANALYSIS Understanding the sub-context in a dramatic script allows you to better represent a playwright’s themes through visual and auditory elements. This textual analysis is the first step in the execution of a theatrical design. University courses place focus on the texts David Ball’s Backwards and Forwards, Rosemary Ingham’s From Page to Stage, and Aristotle’s Poetics. These provide useful tools for dissecting a script, but utilizing James Thomas’s book, Script Analysis for Actors, Directors, and Designers, was more effective for Theatre UCF’s production of Shipwrecked!... Action Analysis Thomas explains a method called formalist analysis, which is described as “the search for playable dramatic values that reveal a central unifying pattern which forms or shares a play from the insides and coordinates all of its parts.” (7) A form of formalist analysis, called action analysis, can be very useful to designers as it primarily focuses on individual events in a plot. Events, as defined by Thomas, are occurrences in a story that would or should not happen. (34) This creates a change in the characters and their surroundings. Breaking down a script into these events allows a designer to see precisely where emotional shifts and conflicts occur, so they mirror the shifts in their work. Since Shipwrecked!... details thirty years of a man’s life, separating the story into a series of large events is a very effective way to look at the text. Shipwrecked! An Entertainment- The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (As Told By Himself) is a modern script from 2009 that takes place in the Victorian world. 2 Rather than having different acts and scenes, the text is divided into chapters that Louis leads his audiences through. Louis opens the show by stating that he rented the theatre facility for the sole purpose of telling people his story. He details how he was a sheltered child during the Victorian Age in England who wound up leaving home and joining a pearling expedition. While on this journey, he learns the ways of sailors but is unfortunately caught in a storm and whirlpool that leaves him and the ship’s dog, Bruno, marooned on an island off the coast of Australia. After two years, he eventually meets an Aborigine tribe and falls in love with the chief’s daughter, Yamba. The two marry and have children. Upon Bruno’s death, Louis makes the difficult decision to leave his family and find a way back to London. Once home, Louis writes his story and submits it to the Wide World Magazine for mass publication. After an initial explosion of fame, the world’s leading scientists question the validity of his claims. Louis, seemingly tired from his old age and fall from grace, concludes his story by riding a sea turtle; disproving the scientist who claimed he could do no such thing and raising the question of how much validity there really was to his story. The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Donald Margulies, crafts a world